Modern human behaviour had not started in Europe 40,000 years ago but in Africa at least 30,000 years earlier. The human revolution theory had to be wrong ... Like everything else in Nature thought and language had emerged gradually just as the laws of evolution said they should. ibid.
With two-hundred and fifty areas of genomes that have undergone recent natural selection. It’s clear that we have evolved away from our ancestors more than anyone anticipated. Professor Alice Roberts, Horizon: Are We Still Evolving? BBC 2011
There are few more pivotal moments in our past than when we started farming some ten thousand years ago. It was to be a defining point in our history. It would transform our diet, our cultures, and provide the foundations of our civilisations. But did its impact run even deeper than that? ibid.
What is it that truly makes us human? Alice Roberts, Horizon: What Makes Us Human? BBC 2013
We humans uniquely habitually walk around upright on two legs … Big brains and upright walking really are hallmarks of humans. ibid.
The brains of our human beings need the stimulation of other humans. ibid.
Human brains have about 40% more connections between cortical neurons than the brains of other primates. ibid.
Humans have essentially got more behaviour which is learnt and less behaviour which is programmed. ibid.
The shape of your face, walking on two legs, the way you see the world, what makes you the person you are? The story of each and every one of us can be traced back millions of years to the plains of Africa. Dr Alice Roberts, Origins of Us 1/3: Bones, BBC 2011
The story starts millions of years ago with an ape who stood upright and walked. ibid.
We are so closely related to chimpanzees we share nearly 99% of our DNA with them. ibid.
We have a common ancestor with chimpanzees going back about six or seven million years ago. So I’m here visiting my relatives. ibid.
Standing upright causes us so many problems – so why did we do it? ibid.
Lucy still appears very ape-like. And her brain was very similar in size to a chimpanzee’s. But becoming a walking ape had fundamentally changed the shape of her body. ibid.
Walking would fundamentally alter the course of our evolutionary history. ibid.
A big bushy family tree. But while most of those lineages would eventually die out one would go on to be extraordinarily successful. ibid.
Our hands have changed because of something we’ve done ... The tools we have created have shaped our hands. ibid.
The need for food hasn’t just shaped sea-squirts it’s shaped us as well – from our own guts to the way we move, the way the behave and even the way we experience the world around us. Alice Roberts, Origins of Us 2/3: Guts
With our three types of colour receptors our eyes can see up to a million different colours. ibid.
Home erectus’s smaller teeth meant a smaller jaw. And he lost that ape-like snout of earlier ancestors. ibid.
The evidence of your diet is etched onto the surface of your teeth in the forms of scratches and pits. ibid.
We are specifically adapted to eating starchy foods. ibid.
An increase in brain size over time. ibid.
I really don’t think we can underestimate the value of fire to our ancestors. ibid.
Recent research suggests it was cooking, not meat, that fuelled the evolution of our big brains. It was cooking that made us human. ibid.
Our bodies are amazing machines honed over millions of years of evolution. But our basic flesh and bones aren’t that different from our closest ape relatives – chimpanzees ... The striking difference between us and any other species on Earth ... we are creatures of the mind. Alice Roberts, Origins of Us 3/3: Brains
We are the last of a large and ancient family of human-like creatures. ibid.
The skulls of our ancestors clearly show an increase in brain size. ibid.
Homo habilis ... only had a brain half the size of ours. ibid.
Homo erectus ... slender and tall. ibid.
Language is central to us ... to homo sapiens. ibid.
Growing our big brains takes time. ibid.
And it was from Africa that our species spread out to colonise the world. ibid.
Why is it that today there’s just us left? ibid.
Neanderthal DNA has revealed clues about their brains. ibid.
Our amazingly clever and complex brains. ibid.
How come then that this so-intellectual being is destroying its only home? ... We are destroying, we are polluting, we are damaging the future of our own species. Jane Goodall, primatologist
Finally, and under a minute to midnight, a tough new species marched toward world domination. They spread rapidly adapting to every challenge. This new species was Homo sapiens – us. Tony Robinson, Catastrophe V: Survival Earth, Channel 4 2008
Our earliest ancestors were rescued from extinction by global warming. Man on Earth with Tony Robinson: Triumph of the Homo Sapiens, Discovery 2010
Man’s 200,000 year battle with the climate. ibid.
160,000 years ago some of the first modern humans ... roamed this area in north-eastern Ethiopia. ibid.
Just how close to extinction Homo sapiens came has recently become shockingly clear. ibid.
The incredible diversity that there was among hominids before homo sapiens finally won the day. ibid.
During its history the climate has fluctuated wildly. ibid.
The social brain: the ability of groups of humans to form contacts and cooperate with each other. ibid.
Neanderthals: they’d evolved down a different branch of the human family tree. ibid.
One pocket remained in Gibraltar. ibid.
Climate changed our destiny. Man on Earth with Tony Robinson II: Birth of Civilisation
Global warming triggered a revolutionary way of living: farming. ibid.
How did global warming cause the Mediterranean to smash through the Bosphorus Sill? ... The Ice Dam was melting, and around 8,400 years ago it finally gave way. ibid.
How the Maya reacted to a devastating drought. Man on Earth with Tony Robinson III: Killer Climate
The Maya were extraordinary; they built vast and ornately decorated stone cities without metal tools. They mapped the heavens and measured time. They had a sophisticated system of writing, a rich culture, and a history that stretched back thousands of years. ibid.
The Maya, their rulers and the gods had effectively entered into a three-way deal. ibid.
Abandoned by the gods and failed by their leaders the Mayan people revolted. ibid.
The Northern Hemisphere was hit by the little ice age. And on the south coast of Greenland two very different societies found themselves in the firing line. ibid.
The Norse settlers were livestock farmers. ibid.
The Inuit and the Norse living side by side but poles apart. ibid.
We call it The Little Ice Age ... Cold enough to freeze the River Thames in London. ibid.
The high plains of south-west America. There 750 years ago the inhabitants of North America’s first cities were hit by a savage drought. ibid.
As the threat of global warming makes our future ever more uncertain I’m looking into the past because we humans have been here before. Man on Earth with Tony Robinson IV: The Modern World
Just how much humans have achieved in only four hundred generations. ibid.
A savage drought is beginning to grip large parts of the Peruvian highlands. ibid.
We call it the Little Ice Age and it delivered two brutal blows to the inhabitants of medieval Europe ... The great famine ... The black death was one of the worst pandemics in history; it began not in Europe but in Asia as a direct consequence of the impact of climate change on rodents. ibid.
The Black Death wiped out between a third and two thirds of the entire population of Europe. In England alone, more than two million people are thought to have died of it. ibid.